Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)

Author: Martha Wells
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

The fourth and final part of the Murderbot Diaries series that began with All Systems Red.

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?

Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?

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Review

Yet another super-fun, surprisingly emotional Murderbot novella. I’m glad she’s continued on with the series and that I have more to go, because these books have become a predictable source of low-stakes entertainment for me. By that I mean I know that when I pop in my headphones and queue up the next audiobook, I’m going to get a fast-paced, exciting story with a kick of heart.

I do think that sometimes these get a little too sci-fi technical for my particular interest, but I can’t help but be impressed by the scope of information, research, nerdiness, and world-building that Martha Wells always brings. I’ve learned to stop worrying about following and understanding every detail and just let the technical parts flow through my brain, trusting her to take me where we need to go together. And that place is always worth it!

I also loved wrapping up the arc that the first four novellas followed; watching Murderbot find, leave, and find its people again was beautiful. Now, on to Network Effect, the first Murderbot novel and a 2021 Hugo Award nominee!

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Content Warnings

• Gun violence and fight scenes

• Blood and medical content

Nightbitch

Author: Rachel Yoder
Publisher: Doubleday
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else ...

At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always traveling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice ...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.

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TL;DR Review

Nightbitch is a wild trip of well-written, feminist magical realism. Rachel Yoder’s depiction of motherhood and the animal that lives inside us rings true, even for those (like me) who aren’t mothers.

For you if: You like weird books and/or literary short stories (it has a similar feel).

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Full Review

“This must be what it means to be an animal, to look at another and say, I am so much that other thing that we are part of one another. Here is my skin. Here yours. Beneath the moon, we pile inside the warm cave, becoming one creature to save our warmth. We breathe together and dream together. This is how it has always been and how it will continue to be. We keep each other alive through an unbroken lineage of togetherness.”

The internet has been abuzz about Nightbitch since its release in mid-July, and it’s no wonder why. This was a good one, folks. A weird one in the best way; a smart, deeply metaphorical use of magical realism with prose that cuts like a knife. I read it in a single afternoon.

The novel is about a woman, “the mother,” who used to direct an art museum but is now a stay-at-home mom to a toddler. As she feels her sense of identity slip further away, she notices curious changes to her body that lead to one conclusion: She’s turning into a dog. I don’t want to say much more for fear of spoilers, but what follows goes deep below the surface of reality to comment on motherhood, identity, power, anger, art, and the most animalistic part of our shared humanity.

What’s really noteworthy about this one, I think, is how relatable it is, even for women who are not mothers. I found myself completely immersed, curious, and outraged. And again, the prose was just so good — spiky but smooth, economical but not sparse, flowing and engaging.

If you like literary short stories, especially those that dip into the unreal to comment on the real, I think you’ll like this book. Born out of a single metaphor, it has a similar vibe.

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Content Warnings

• Animal death/killing

• Body horror

Feral Creatures (Hollow Kingdom, #2)

Author: Kira Jane Buxton
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

In this stunning follow-up to Hollow Kingdom, the animal kingdom's “favorite apocalyptic hero” is back with a renewed sense of hope for humanity, ready to take on a world ravaged by a viral pandemic (Helen Macdonald).

Once upon an apocalypse, there lived an obscenely handsome American crow named S.T. . . .

When the world last checked-in with its favorite Cheeto addict, the planet had been overrun by flesh-hungry beasts, and nature had started re-claiming her territory from humankind. S.T., the intrepid crow, alongside his bloodhound-bestie Dennis, had set about saving pets that had become trapped in their homes after humanity went the way of the dodo.

That is, dear reader, until S.T. stumbled upon something so rare — and so precious — that he vowed to do everything in his power to safeguard what could, quite literally, be humanity's last hope for survival. But in a wild world plagued by prejudiced animals, feather-raising environments, new threats so terrifying they make zombies look like baby bunnies, and a horrendous dearth of cheesy snacks, what's a crow to do?

Why, wing it on another big-hearted, death-defying adventure, that's what! Joined by a fabulous new cast of animal characters, S.T. faces many new challenges plus his biggest one yet: parenthood.

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TL;DR Review

I loved Feral Creatures! It was just as funny and heartwarming and clever as Hollow Kingdom. Kira Jane Buxton is so witty and these books are exactly my kind of humor.

For you if: You like books that will make you laugh out loud and then tear up, possibly all in the same paragraph.

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Full Review

“The prophet Emily Dickinson once said, ‘Hope is a thing with feathers.’ I was a bird with hope laced through every barbule of every feather, but I couldn’t protect the last MoFo on my own.”

I’ve been waiting for Feral Creatures since the minute I heard it was going to be published, and my friends, it did not disappoint. Hollow Kingdom was one of the funniest and most surprising books I think I’ve ever read, and Feral Creatures brings all the same greatness to the table.

This is a true sequel, so if you haven’t read Hollow Kingdom yet, do that first. The duology is about a sweary, domesticated crow named S.T. (which stands for Shit Turd — his owner was rough around the edges lol) who thinks humans are called MoFos, lmao. In the first book, humans start turning into screen-hunting zombies, and S.T. embarks on a mission with his friend Dennis the dog to save all the domesticated animals. In Feral Creatures, it picks up a short while later, with S.T. in parental mode trying to save his “nestling” from her fate in this new, changed world.

These books are magic because Kira Jane Buxton is SO WITTY. They’re full of impeccably timed swear words (without being crass), and I promise you’ll laugh out loud. Then, sometimes even in the same paragraph or sentence, she’ll turn around and squeeze the heck out of your poor little heart. So, if you like laughing and tearing up all at the same time, these books are for you.

It’s also really beautiful the way Buxton weaves in her deep knowledge and love for the animal kingdom, with interstitial chapters told from the point of view of animals all over the world — each with their own personality (and, in the audiobook, accent!). Still in love with the dog from the first book who spoke about herself in the third poodle.

I would take a bullet for S.T. the crow. Read these books. Kthanksbye.

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Content Warnings

• Lots of profanity

• Body horror/zombies

• Animal death

• Rape/assault (alluded to)

The Promise

Author: Damon Galgut
Publisher: Europa Editions
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

A modern saga that could only have come from South Africa, written in gorgeous prose that could only come from the pen of literary giant and Booker Prize-shortlisted author, Damon Galgut.

The Promise is the story of the Swart family—theirs is a story of failed possibilities, much like the history of their country. Haunted by an unmet promise made to the family servant, the well-to-do Swarts lose touch after the death of their mother.

Reunited by three funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the charged atmosphere of post-apartheid South Africa in a family drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history.

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TL;DR Review

I’m really glad I read The Promise, which brings South Africa from the end of Apartheid to the present day to life on the page, vividly and impressively. Damon Galgut is obviously a masterful writer.

For you if: You are interested in recent South African history, and/or just want a really great literary fiction read.

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Full Review

I read The Promise for two reasons: first, on my good friend @bernie.lombardi’s recommendation, and second, because it was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize (as Bernie expected!). I’m glad I did; this is a good one.

The story takes place in South Africa over about 30 years, from almost the end of Apartheid to pretty much modern day. (Bernie sent some great links for short background reading on South Africa that were really helpful: here, here, and here.) It follows one dwindling white family, focusing on the four times they came together for funerals.

The narration is one of the things that really makes this novel stand out. Reading this book is probably the closest I’ve ever come to reading water. The narration flows and jumps from person to person without pause, sometimes mid-paragraph or even mid-sentence, sometimes landing on nobody at all but rather an omniscient voice. There are no section breaks for stretches of ~90 pages. But it’s not a drag; rather, it has a propulsive momentum. I found myself meaning to get up and turn on the light for like half an hour, having found no good moment to pause.

The novel is full of plenty of layers and metaphors; it’s one of those where the title has several different meanings, which I love. It examines patriotism amidst progress, race and power, and whether we applaud those who do the bare minimum. It brings South Africa at this period of history to life on the page in a visceral, unflinching way.

If you like literary historical fiction and family sagas, this one might be for you!

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Content Warnings

• Bulemia (graphic), fatphobia

• Suicide

• Kidnapping

• Gun violence / murder

• Racism (era of Apartheid)

A Passage North

Author: Anuk Arudpragasam
Publisher: Hogarth
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

A young man journeys into Sri Lanka's war-torn north in this searing novel of longing, loss, and the legacy of war from the award-winning author of The Story of a Brief Marriage.

A Passage North begins with a message from out of the blue: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother's caretaker, Rani, has died under unexpected circumstances—found at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an impassioned yet aloof activist Krishnan fell in love with years before while living in Delhi, stirring old memories and desires from a world he left behind.

As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for Rani's funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the innermost reaches of a country. At once a powerful meditation on absence and longing, as well as an unsparing account of the legacy of Sri Lanka's thirty-year civil war, this procession to a pyre "at the end of the earth" lays bare the imprints of an island's past, the unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek.

Written with precision and grace, Anuk Arudpragasam's masterful new novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of devastation, and a poignant memorial for those lost and those still alive.

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TL;DR Review

A Passage North is undoubtedly a beautiful and impressive novel. At times, it felt a bit over the top to me, but on the whole I liked it and I’m glad I read it.

For you if: You are open to experimental, description-heavy narration styles.

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Full Review

A Passage North was my first read from the 2021 Booker Prize longlist, and what a way to kick things off.

The book is about a Sri Lankan man named Krishan. Two things happen to kick us off: he receives an email from an ex-girlfriend, Anjum; and he learns that his grandmother’s former caretaker, Rani, has fallen down a well and died. The novel takes place over the following two days or so, as he travels north to Rani’s village to attend her funeral.

So much of this just feels like a Booker book — heavy themes, lyrical prose … and not a single bit of dialogue in the whole book, lol. There are conversations recounted and remembered, but none of them are written as dialogue. The whole novel takes place inside the thoughts and memories swirling around Krishan’s head — memories of his time at university, of stories and poems that moved him, of his relationship with Anjum, of his grandmother’s fierce denial of her aging body contrasted with Rani’s halfhearted battle with depression and PTSD.

Paragraphs go on for whole pages or more, while sentences go on forever and ever, never ceasing, as though they could keep going forever, as though you will never reach the end, twisting and turning around in his thoughts with momentum, with revision, and just when you think they’re concluding, there’s another clause, another comma, another line taunting you, making you feel as if you’re trapped for all eternity.

You know that feeling when you stay in a really fancy hotel or do something bougie and you’re like this is amazing, but also so extra? That’s how I felt about this book. The narration style often felt overworked, to the point where it was almost distracting. I did sink into it during some stretches, and the audiobook helped a LOT, and it really was a beautiful, impressive book. So I walked away feeling net positive.

If you love lyricism and you’re up for a challenge, give this one a shot. But if you’re not one for experimental styles, proceed with caution.

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Content Warnings

• Death and grief

• Suicide (possibly)

• Death of one’s child

• Severe PTSD

Songbirds

Author: Christy Lefteri
Publisher: Ballantine
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

From the prize-winning author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, a stunning novel about the disappearance of a Sri Lankan nanny and how the most vulnerable people find their voices.

It began with a crunch of leaves and earth. So early, so cold, the branches shone with ice. I'd returned to collect the songbirds. They are worth more than their weight in gold.

Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the black market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha, who works on the island as a nanny and maid—having left her native Sri Lanka to try to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind and raised by relatives.

But Nisha has vanished; one evening, she steps out on a mysterious errand and doesn't return. The police write off her disappearance as just another runaway domestic worker, so her employer, Petra, undertakes the investigation.

Petra's unravelling of Nisha's last days in Cyprus lead her to Nisha's friends—other maids in the neighborhood—and to the darker side of a migrant's life, where impossible choices leave them vulnerable, captive, and worse.

Based on the real-life disappearance of domestic workers in Cyprus, Christy Lefteri has crafted a poignant, deeply empathetic narrative of the human stories behind the headlines. With infinite tenderness and skill, Songbirds offers a triumphant story of the fight for truth and justice, and of women reclaiming their lost voices.

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TL;DR Review

I liked Songbirds, although The Beekeeper of Aleppo is still my favorite of Lefteri’s. Still, I think this book does good things and will appeal to lots of different types of readers.

For you if: You want fast-paced contemporary fiction with beautiful sentences and a substantive topic.

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Full Review

First, thank you to Ballantine for the digital review copy of this book!

I jumped at the chance to read this one after loving Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which won the 2020 Aspen Words literary prize. While I still think Beekeeper is my favorite of the two, Songbirds was a moving, well-written novel with good characters and plenty of momentum.

Inspired by true events, Songbirds takes place in Cyprus and starts when a Sri Lankan domestic worker named Nisha disappears. The novel is told in alternating points of view between Yiannis, her boyfriend, who is also trying to extricate himself from an underground poaching operation; and Petra, her employer, a single mother who takes it upon herself to search for Nisha (and begins to peel back a fog of grief and layers of her privilege as she does).

So on the one hand, this book is a tender depiction of the erasure and strife of immigrant domestic workers in this part of the world; on the other, it’s a mystery: what happened to Nisha? I think a lot of different types of readers will like it. Petra’s journey uncovering her own prejudice occasionally feels elementary, but I appreciated the way it intersected with her grief as a widow and her resulting struggle as a mother. I also wanted to shake Yiannis, but despite his weakness he does have an inherently good heart. Lefteri’s sentences are really beautiful, and the audiobook (which features two voice actors for our two narrators) was well done.

I think this book could be a good gateway novel if you’re looking to move from mystery/thriller genre fiction into a more contemporary fiction space, or it could be a good quick read with teeth if you spend most of your time in literary fiction. I’m glad I read it.

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Content Warnings

• Animal cruelty and killing (poaching)

• Racism and intense xenophobia/prejudice

• Miscarriage (graphic)

• Abduction

The Women of Troy (Women of Troy, #2)

Author: Pat Barker
Publisher: Doubleday
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

Following her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths.

Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.

But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended - the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied - and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea. And, in these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.

Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can — with young, dangerously naïve Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest — and begins to see the path to a kind of revenge. Briseis has survived the Trojan War, but peacetime may turn out to be even more dangerous...

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TL;DR Review

Those who loved The Silence of the Girls will love The Women of Troy, its sequel. It offers a powerful look, through the eyes of Briseis, into the aftermath of Troy’s defeat and what it meant for the Trojan women who became slaves.

For you if: You like feminist Greek mythology retellings. I recommend reading The Silence of the Girls first!

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Full Review

First, thank you Doubleday for the gifted finished copy! I loved The Silence of the Girls, its predecessor, and had a feeling this one would also be for me. I was right. The Women of Troy is gutting, thought-provoking, and intelligently, beautifully written. If you love Greek mythology retellings, this one’s got your name written all over it.

The Women of Troy picks up where The Silence of the Girls ended, picking up Briseis’s story at the end of the Trojan war. Briseis, who was Achilles’s bed slave while he was alive, is now carrying his child and married to one of his former counselors. We also get a few chapters from the perspective of Pyrrhus, Achille’s son, who is grappling (and cracking) with the enormous pressure of upholding a legacy.

Two big things shined for me in this story. First, the way Barker continues to give enslaved women voices, showing the unimaginable things they were expected to just absorb and live with; to go from being Trojan royalty, mothers, daughters — to bed slaves of the men who murdered everyone they loved. We already saw Briseis go through that in The Silence of the Girls, and it’s fascinating (and devastating) to see her attempt to coach her friends through it while also attempting to still protect herself and grapple with the distance her privileged position wedges between them, between her very identity as a Trojan. The gulf widens even as she grasps at it.

The second thing was Pyrrhus’s spiral. Before I read this book, I brushed up on him, and I ended up reading a two-part blog series from Madeline Miller. She says there are two famous depictions of him: the first, and most well known, is Vergil’s portrait in the Aneid of a narcissistic psychopath. The second is from Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which shows him as a child attempting to do right by his father. In this book, Pat Barker seems to have merged these two versions, showing a boy cracking and breaking under the weight of his father’s legacy.

And throughout, of course, we have Pat Barker’s beautiful prose. Read The Silence of the Girls, if you haven’t yet, and then read this!

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Content Warnings

• Use of the R word

• Sex slavery and sexual violence

• Brutal war violence (see: the Iliad/Aeneid)

The President and the Frog

Author: Carolina De Robertis
Publisher: Knopf
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

From the acclaimed author of Cantoras comes an incandescent novel—political, mystical, timely, and heartening—about the power of memory, and the pursuit of justice.

At his modest home on the edge of town, the former president of an unnamed Latin American country receives a journalist in his famed gardens to discuss his legacy and the dire circumstances that threaten democracy around the globe. Once known as the Poorest President in the World, his reputation is the stuff of myth: a former guerilla who was jailed for inciting revolution before becoming the face of justice, human rights, and selflessness for his nation. Now, as he talks to the journalist, he wonders if he should reveal the strange secret of his imprisonment: while held in brutal solitary confinement, he survived, in part, by discussing revolution, the quest for dignity, and what it means to love a country, with the only creature who ever spoke back—a loud-mouth frog.

As engrossing as it is innovative, vivid, moving, and full of wit and humor, The President and the Frog explores the resilience of the human spirit and what is possible when danger looms. Ferrying us between a grim jail cell and the president's lush gardens, the tale reaches beyond all borders and invites us to reimagine what it means to lead, to dare, and to dream.

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TL;DR Review

The President and the Frog is a quirky, funny, moving, and ultimately hopeful little novel. It won’t be for everyone, but I really liked it.

For you if: You like literary fiction, historical fiction, and fables.

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Full Review

First, thank you to Knopf for the gifted copy of this book! Like many others, I read and loved Cantoras, and so I jumped at the chance to read Caronlina De Robertis’ next novel. If you’re hoping for a similar story in The President and the Frog, you might be disappointed — the stories are very different — but her gorgeous writing and piercing insight into humanity is absolutely here.

Part historical fiction, part fable, The President and the Frog is about a man whose character is a fictionalized version of José Mujica, the former president of Uruguay. As he welcomes yet another reporter into his home, he finds himself ruminating on a story he’s never, in his years as an open book, told anyone: the visits from a talking, prescient frog during his solitary confinement as a political prisoner. We flash backward and forward in time, between the frog urging him to dig deep to find The One Thing, and the reporter who’s nervous about the global ramifications of climate change and the 2016 US election. What emerges is a story that offers a grounded form of hope and optimism in the face of grim reality.

The middle felt a little slow for me, but that’s because I’m not the kind of person to seek out historical fiction for the sake of the genre, and I know very little about the political history of Uruguay. I imagine that someone with a personal connection to the country or an interest in history in general would feel much differently. Still, I loved the beginning and the end of this book enough to have really liked this book overall. De Robertis has written us a funny, quirky, moving, and memorable tale that reminds us not only what it means to not only fight for the good, but also the struggle and importance of reminding ourselves why.

Finally: De Robertis narrated her own audiobook, which I listened to as I read. I really believe this added a lot to my reading experience — her rendition of the frog, in all his smart-ass wisdom, brought him to life in a way that I can’t imagine could have happened on the page alone.

If you like literary fiction, historical fiction, and fables (what a combo!), pick this one up.

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Content Warnings

• Confinement

• Rape (alluded to)

Ghost Forest

Author: Pik-Shuen Fung
Publisher: One World
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

How do you grieve, if your family doesn't talk about feelings?

This is the question the unnamed protagonist of Ghost Forest considers after her father dies. One of the many Hong Kong "astronaut" fathers, he stays there to work, while the rest of the family immigrated to Canada before the 1997 Handover, when the British returned sovereignty over Hong Kong to China.

As she revisits memories of her father through the years, she struggles with unresolved questions and misunderstandings. Turning to her mother and grandmother for answers, she discovers her own life refracted brightly in theirs.

Buoyant, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Ghost Forest is a slim novel that envelops the reader in joy and sorrow. Fung writes with a poetic and haunting voice, layering detail and abstraction, weaving memory and oral history to paint a moving portrait of a Chinese-Canadian astronaut family.

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TL;DR Review

Ghost Forest is a beautiful, reflective little book on the immigrant experience and the loss of a parent. I thought it was really beautiful.

For you if: You like novels told in vignettes.

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Full Review

First, thank you One World for the review copy of this book on NetGalley. One World’s books never let me down, and Ghost Forest was no exception.

Sparsely written and told entirely in vignettes, Ghost Forest almost doesn’t even feel like a novel. It’s written as a reflection on the narrator’s experiences as the daughter of an “astronaut father” (one who lived and worked in Hong Kong while his family emigrated elsewhere) and his later death by cancer. It’s also an homage to the women in her family — most particularly, her mother and grandmother, whose stories she became truly curious about only after her father died.

This is a book that would be easy to inhale but begs to be savored. I did read it in one sitting, but I had to force myself to read the words slowly and give each vignette a moment to sit with me before moving to the next one. It’s worth it — if you rush through this book, you’ll get little from it. Its power is in the quiet moments, the in-between unsaid things.

I was particularly struck by the portion of the novel where she describes her father’s funeral. She and her sister experienced their family’s funeral traditions for the first time, trying so desperately to get them right while also processing the loss they’d just endured. It is hard to hold both of those things in your mind at the same time.

There is no plot here, but it doesn’t need it. Also, the author reads the audiobook, and it was really well done. If you’re a fan of literary fiction or memoir, pick this one up. What an impressive debut.

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Content Warnings

• Cancer

• Death of a parent

Jazz

Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.

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Review

“Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things.”

It’s hard to give my thoughts on a Toni Morrison novel and feel like I have anything to say that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. I still find it difficult to believe that she was a real person who was literally, truly just this talented. Where does that come from? How does that happen?

Jazz wasn’t my favorite of her novels so far, but I did still enjoy it. Written not just to mimic jazz music but to embody it, Jazz is a novel mainly about three characters: Violet, her husband Joe, and the young girl named Dorcas whom Joe has an affair with. The story begins on the day of Dorcas’s funeral — Joe shot and killed her rather than lose her to disinterest. Violet shows up at the funeral to cut the dead girl’s face. From there, we sweep backward and forward in time to learn about not only these characters, but those who raised them and those around them. And of course, the prose is exquisite.

It did take me quite a few weeks to read this one, because I had a really really busy few weeks at work, and it requires a bit more mental energy than I had to give. It’s not linear or straightforward; the narrative darts and sweeps and circles. Also, I’ve gotten used to listening along with Toni’s novels — she narrates her own audiobooks. But I was devastated to learn that the only audiobook version of this book is abridged. WHO ABRIDGES TONI MORRISON? WHY? (Especially the one meant to embody jazz music??) So obviously I opted to read without audio so I could experience the whole novel — but I really missed her voice in my ear. But at the end of the day, I ended the book in awe once again.

Onward in my Morrison journey — next up is Paradise!

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Content Warnings

• Gun violence

• Miscarriage (mentioned)

• Racism

Redemptor (Raybearer, #2)

Author: Jordan Ifueko
Publisher: Amulet Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

***Synopsis is spoiler for Raybearer***

For the first time, an Empress Redemptor sits on Aritsar's throne. To appease the sinister spirits of the dead, Tarisai must now anoint a council of her own, coming into her full power as a Raybearer. She must then descend into the Underworld, a sacrifice to end all future atrocities.

Tarisai is determined to survive. Or at least, that's what she tells her increasingly distant circle of friends. Months into her shaky reign as empress, child spirits haunt her, demanding that she pay for past sins of the empire.

With the lives of her loved ones on the line, assassination attempts from unknown quarters, and a handsome new stranger she can't quite trust . . . Tarisai fears the pressure may consume her. But in this finale to the Raybearer duology, Tarisai must learn whether to die for justice . . . or to live for it.

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TL;DR Review

Redemptor (and the Raybearer Duology overall) is just so freakin good, with a rich world, lovable characters, and an adventure I’d go on a hundred times.

For you if: You like YA fantasy, and/or you want to read more African-inspired YA fantasy.

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Full Review

I read Raybearer earlier this year and was immediately obsessed. Everyone who read it will tell you that it’s incredible. So naturally I jumped at the chance to read Redemptor, the second half of the duology. (Thank you Amulet Books / Abrams for the digital review copy!) And I’m delighted to report that this book absolutely lived up to its predecessor — what a fantastic conclusion.

No spoilers on book one from me, but here’s a quick overview: The duology is about a girl named Tarisai, the daughter of a ruthless woman called The Lady and an alagbato (being of ancient, wish-granting magic) The Lady trapped. Tarisai grows up lonely, and the product of a deadly plot. When she turns 11, she’s sent to the palace to join the crown prince’s council of siblings. Meanwhile, a tenuous child-sacrifice peace treaty with the abiku, underworld beings, is up for renewal. Book one deals mainly with Tarisai’s mother’s plans, and book two deals mainly with the abiku.

I can’t get over how much I loved these books. This is African-inspired YA fantasy at its absolute best. The worldbuilding is rich and layered, with much to say about class and privilege and industrialization and more. The story is an A+ mystery, with lots of plots to unfurl and dots to connect. And the characters are intensely lovable, with great queer (even ace) representation.

All that was true of Raybearer, and it’s true of Redemptor as well. I loved the way Ifueko brought the weight on Tarisai’s shoulders to life, not shying away from her loneliness and inner conflict. I loved the new world-building elements and mythology. I loved the tension between the choice to “die for justice … or live for it.”

I will also say that I had the joy of listening along with the audiobook of Raybearer, but because I read Redemptor early, I didn’t get to listen to that one. I missed it! The audio production was really good, and I recommend supplementing your print copy with audio in both cases.

I absolutely can’t wait to see what Ifueko writes next!

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Content Warnings

• Panic attacks

• Violence and blood

• Ableism

Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)

Author: Martha Wells
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

SciFi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is again on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah’s SecUnit is.

And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

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Review

Another fun, fast-paced Murderbot novella in the bag! These audiobooks are the perfect snack to my weekends as I shop for groceries, clean my apartment, etc.

In this installment, Murderbot can’t shake the idea that Dr, Mensah and his friends from the fist novella might be in danger, so it sets off to see if it can dig up some read dirt on GrayCris, the corporation that caused this mess to begin with. It ends up crossing paths with a group of people and their bot, Miki, who end up in danger themselves.

Murderbot fans: Brace yourself for the emotional ride in this one. Miki has been treated as an equal by its humans all its life, and it has a innocent, child-like, joyful demeanor and a big ol’ heart. How does Martha Wells keep making us fall in love with these robots? And why does she then stomp our hearts? lol.

Something fun about these novellas so far is that they feel very episodic and serial at the same time. Each one has had its own plot and adventure, but this GrayCris story is the constant undercurrent. Fun adventures, great characters, can’t lose.

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Content Warnings

• Blood and violence

• Death and grief

The Once and Future Witches

Author: Alix E. Harrow
Publisher: Redhook
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters — James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna — join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.

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TL;DR Review

The Once and Future Witches is the best kind of witchy historical fantasy book: atmospheric, feminist, well-researched, emotional. Also, gorgeous prose. I loved every second of it.

For you if: You like a fairytale storyteller voice — and really strong women.

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Full Review

“Witchcraft isn’t one thing but many things, all the ways and words women have found to wreak their wills on the world.”

Here’s what you need to know about this book: Suffragist witches. Intersectional feminist, gorgeously rendered, fierce, flawed, badass suffragist witches. Convinced yet?

The story follows three sisters, James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna. Raised by an abusive father and their witchy grandmother but estranged years ago, they’re drawn back together by what feels like fate one explosive spring equinox in New Salem. Bella finds herself drawn into an ancient magical mystery. Agnes finds herself faced with an opportunity to reopen her own heart. And Juniper finds herself upending the local women’s association (and pretty much everything else). Over the course of more than 500 pages (it’s a standalone), they take us on a journey about sisterhood and womanhood and wills and ways and words and fierce, burning strength.

Reading this book was an absolutely delicious experience — Alix Harrow’s whimsical storyteller voice, the reimagining of fairytales, the historical research, the homage to Black women of the suffrage era (and all history), the rich world-building, the beautiful queerness, the love-to-hate-him villain, and the absolutely stunning, dogear-all-the-pages prose. I don’t know if I could even think of one thing I love in a book that wasn’t here. I can’t believe it took me so long to pick it up.

If fantasy is your comfort genre, this is the kind of book you sink into when you’re tired and need a book to catch you. Or when you want a book that feels like home in your heart. But it’s also a good one for folks who like low fantasy — the kind that takes place in the real world, like Addie LaRue or the Night Circus.

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Content Warnings

• Child abuse

• Abortion (brief)

• Pregnancy and perilous childbirth

• Kidnapping (of one’s baby)

• Confinement

All's Well

Author: Mona Awad
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, a darkly funny novel about a theater professor suffering chronic pain, who in the process of staging a troubled production of Shakespeare’s most maligned play, suddenly and miraculously recovers.

Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised, and cost, her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known.

With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged...genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is the story of a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.

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TL;DR Review

All’s Well is a weird, frustrating, trippy, impressive, darkly funny story about being a woman with chronic pain. The right readers will love it.

For you if: You like experimental novels and/or Shakespeare.

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Full Review

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for sending me a review copy of this book! I’m still not quite sure what I just read, but … in a good way? I haven’t read Bunny, but by all accounts, if you liked that one from Mona Awad, you’ll like this one too. It’s weird — almost psychedelic — darkly funny, and impressively crafted.

The book is about a theatre professor named Miranda Fitch, whose acting career was just taking off when she suffered injuries that still cause her terrible chronic pain today. She can’t walk, can’t sit, can’t live normally at all. But now it’s now been so long that everyone around her is starting to suspect that her pain is psychosomatic, and that she’s just not trying hard enough to get better. At work, she’s determined to stage “All’s Well That Ends Well,” but her headstrong students go behind her back to try to stage Macbeth instead. Then she goes to a dive bar and meets three strange men who seem to know her and her life, and they show her a “trick” — and everything changes.

This is one of those impressive books with a writing style that makes you feel exactly how the main character feels — frustrated and exhausted. It’s written in short sentence fragments that never feel resolved, that pull you through the text in short, stilting, never-ending bursts. We, as readers, are made to question what is real and what is not at every turn. The story spins and swirls around us as Miranda tips further and further over the edge. You’ll also finish it and go … what did I just read?

So this book won’t be for everyone, but if you’re here for trippy, experimental novels (and Shakespeare references!), I think you’ll like this one. It’s crafted in a way that’s just so effective in tackling the subject of ableism, chronic pain, and the way society treats women with it.

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Content Warnings

• Drug (prescription painkiller) and alcohol use

• Suicidal thoughts

• Chronic pain/illness

• Medical trauma

• Medical gaslighting

The Five Wounds

Author: Kirstin Valdez Quade
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.

It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to.

The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as “legitimate masterpieces” (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.

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TL;DR Review

The Five Wounds is simultaneously big-hearted and unflinching, with characters who feel like they could literally step off the page. I really liked it.

For you if: You like character-driven novels — and flawed characters.

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Full Review

“What no one appreciates is that it takes courage—and considerable dramatic flair—to show up and insist you belong, to invoke genetic claims and demand food and love and housing.”

If not for Roxane Gay’s Audacious book club on Literati, this book may have flown completely under my radar. I’m so glad that wasn’t the case. It’s been a while since I read a book with such vivid, flawed, tenderly written characters.

The novel, which grew out of a short story from Valdez Quade’s collection Night at the Fiestas, has three main characters: Amadeo, an unemployed alcoholic living with his mother and looking for a quick fix for his life; his fierce, strong, pregnant teenage daughter, Angel; and his mother, Yolanda, who’s carrying a very heavy secret. The story kicks off during holy week in New Mexico, when Amadeo is set to play a key role in the ceremonies with his uncle’s religious brotherhood, and Angel unexpectedly turns up on his (Yolanda’s) doorstep.

There are also so many vivid, incredible secondary and tertiary characters in this book, from Angel’s mother to her child’s father and more. I wish I had space to tell you about them all. A fourth POV character is introduced in part two, but I won’t spoil that because I had expected this person to be a much better, less selfish person than they turned out to be. In fact, that’s what makes these characters, and this book, so impressive — how many mistakes Valdez Quade allows her characters to make, how many bad things happen to and are brought about by them, and yet how tenderly they’re written, and how you grow to love them. Even Amadeo, whom I wanted to punch more than once, feels like that one family member you love because they’re family even though they’re also not a very good person.

I also switched back and forth between print and audio for this one, and the audiobook is really well done. The narrator played a big role in helping to bring these characters to life.

Anywho, this one’s for my character-driven literary fiction book fam. Add it to your TBR; give it a read or a listen.

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Content Warnings

• Alcoholism

• Drug use (prescription painkillers, marijuana)

• Cancer

• Death and grief

• Toxic relationship

• Homophobia

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Author: Becky Chambers
Publisher: Tor.com
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future.

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They're going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

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TL;DR Review

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a beautiful, funny, hopeful novella full of heart and what it means to be human. I really, really loved it.

For you if: You’re looking for a hopeful story and like soft sci-fi.

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Full Review

“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.”

Hey you. Yes, you. Are you looking for a short book (a novella, in fact) that’s emotional, beautiful, and hopeful? Now you are. And wow, do I have the book for you.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is about a young monk named Sibling Dex who’s dissatisfied with their life as-is, so they venture out of the city and into the countryside to find a new calling — and themselves. Seeking solitude, Dex wanders into the protected wildlands, which centuries ago were ceded to robots who chose to live free and unhindered by humanity. There they meet an unlikely friend — and learn both more and less than they'd ever expected.

One of the best parts of fantasy and sci-fi is the way they suspend certain aspects of reality in order to focus on all the things that make us human. You may not expect a book set on another planet with a sentient robot as a main character to teach you about reframing and valuing differences; about gender; about learning to be kind and forgiving to yourself; about feeling content and happy and valuable just as you are. And yet here is Becky Chambers, with Sibling Dex and Mosscap, bringing us this giant hug in 160 pages.

But don’t be misled: It’s not fluffy, and it’s not woo-woo. This story has teeth, and heart, and insight so empathetic that you’ll marvel that you never articulated these ideas on your own. And the audiobook, by the way, was really beautifully performed.

Take a few hours and read this one. You won’t regret it.

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Content Warnings

• Cursing

Rock the Boat

Author: Beck Dorey-Stein
Publisher: Dial Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

Old friends discover how much has changed (and how much has stayed the same) when they reunite in their seaside hometown for one unforgettable summer — from the New York Times bestselling author of From the Corner of the Oval

"The perfect summer read." — LAUREN WEISBERGER, author of The Devil Wears Prada and Where the Grass Is Green and the Girls Are Pretty

When Kate Campbell's life in Manhattan suddenly implodes, she is forced to return to Sea Point, the small town full of quirky locals, quaint bungalows, and beautiful beaches where she grew up. She knows she won't be home for long; she's got every intention (and a three-point plan) to win back everything she thinks she's lost.

Meanwhile, Miles Hoffman — aka "The Prince of Sea Point" — has also returned home to prove to his mother that he's capable of taking over the family business, and he's promised to help his childhood best friend, Ziggy Miller, with his own financial struggles at the same time. Kate, Miles, and Ziggy converge in Sea Point as the town faces an identity crisis when a local developer tries to cash in on its potential. The summer swells, and white lies and long-buried secrets prove as corrosive as the salt air, threatening to forever erode not only the bonds between the three friends but also the landscape of the beachside community they call home.

Full of heart and humor — and laced with biting wit — Rock the Boat proves that even when you know all the back roads, there aren't any shortcuts to growing up.

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TL;DR Review

Rock the Boat is a fun, heartwarming story — like a Lifetime movie, but with better characters and more heart. A true lighthearted beach read if I ever read one.

For you if: You want something quick, light, and entertaining.

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Full Review

First, big thanks to Random House for sending me a gifted copy of this book, along with an Allswell bath towel and a thing-a-day happiness journal! I loved being part of this month’s Random House Book Club. It falls outside my usual genres, but was perfect timed with my beach vacation.

I read Beck Dorey-Stein’s first book, From the Corner of the Oval, a memoir about her (surprisingly dramatic) time as a White House stenographer in the Obama administration. I also had the pleasure of meeting her at the Girls’ Night In book club meetup in NYC, where she told us she was working on a novel. And here it is, in my hands! So fun.

Rock the Boat is mainly about a woman in her 30s named Kate, who is suddenly dumped by her rich boyfriend, Legally Blonde-style, at the very start of the book. In one day, her glamorous NYC lifestyle poofs into nothing, and she heads home to her tiny hometown on the Jersey Shore to recover. There, she reconnects with her first friend and next-door neighbor, Ziggy, whose father recently died, and Ziggy’s best friend (and son of the richest businesswoman in town) Miles.

As you can guess, this is a story about finding yourself and what you truly want in life, and not letting others tell what those things are. It’s about finding what’s really important and holding onto it. It’s a little cheesy, yes, and the characters are not very diverse. But recognizing this book for what it is, I had fun with it. It has a big heart, lovable characters you can’t help but root for, a touch of romance, and a happy ending. Truly a quintessential summer read!

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Content Warnings

• Death of a parent

• Toxic romantic relationship

Olympus, Texas

Author: Stacey Swann
Publisher: Doubleday
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

A bighearted debut with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology.

The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down.

An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?

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TL;DR Review

Olympus, Texas is a roller-coaster read full of heart — part contemporary literary fiction, part Greek mythology retelling. I enjoyed every second.

For you if: You’re looking for a light read that still feels literary.

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Full Review

“She hadn't yet learned that since love was the creation of two people, and people were always defective in one way or another, then the love itself was necessarily flawed. She knew that now, definitively.”

I’m a sucker for a) Greek mythology retellings, and b) poetic prose. So when I heard about Olympus, Texas, which has both, I knew I had to read it. All the praise described it as a wildly entertaining family drama, and so I saved it for a trip to the beach. Dear reader, this is the perfect literary beach read. A beach read for people who don’t typically read “beach reads.”

The Briscoe family is the most infamous in Olympus, Texas — matriarch June (guarded, sort of bitter) and patriarch Peter (a massive man, and a philanderer); their children, March (who has anger issues), Hap (a mechanic), and Thea (an attorney); Hap’s wife Vera (beautiful but jaded); and Peter’s twins by a mistress, Artie (a hunting tour guide) and Arlo (a musician). Oh, and their uncle Hayden (runs the local morgue, lives across the river). Two inciting incidents: Hap and Vera are having trouble after Vera and March had an affair, and Arlo seethes with jealousy over Artie’s new boyfriend, who (he thinks) threatens their closeness. Ringing any bells?

You definitely don’t have to be familiar with Greek mythology to love this one, but if you are familiar, you’ll love it all the more. The connections are super obvious, but well done; I found them fun without being cheesy. The characters, much like the gods they’re based on, are compelling (and make terrible choices), but Swann has done a really great job of fleshing them out, making them modern and human, giving them real, deep problems to grapple with as they struggle with what it means to love others and be loved in return.

In short, I had a blast with this book. Give it a go!

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Content Warnings

• Infidelity

• Accidental death/hunting accident

Who They Was

Author: Gabriel Krauze
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

An astonishing, visceral autobiographical novel about a young man straddling two cultures: the university where he is studying English Literature and the disregarded world of London gang warfare.

The unforgettable narrator of this compelling, thought-provoking debut goes by two names in his two worlds. At the university he attends, he’s Gabriel, a seemingly ordinary, partying student learning about morality at a distance. But in his life outside the classroom, he’s Snoopz, a hard living member of London’s gangs, well-acquainted with drugs, guns, stabbings, and robbery. Navigating these sides of himself, dealing with loving parents at the same time as treacherous, endangering friends and the looming threat of prison, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is and the life he's chosen for himself.

In a distinct, lyrical urban slang all his own, author Gabriel Krauze brings to vivid life the underworld of his city and the destructive impact of toxic masculinity. Who They Was is a disturbing yet tender and perspective-altering account of the thrill of violence and the trauma it leaves behind. It is the story of inner cities everywhere, and of the lost boys who must find themselves in their tower blocks.

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TL;DR Review

Who They Was is autofiction that doesn’t make for an easy read, but it’s nothing if not unique — and effective in what it set out to do.

For you if: You won’t get thrown by reading in dialect, and you’re more interested in craft than plot.

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Full Review

Wow, okay. I read Who They Was because it was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, which is great because I probably never would have picked it up on my own. It’s autofiction, a fictionalized version of the author’s life on the violent streets of London … while he earned a university degree on the side.

This book is definitely like nothing else I’ve read before. First of all, the prose is wildly impressive. It’s written in the style of language that Krauze and his characters speak every day, a sort of dialect all its own. It’s got incredible momentum, and Krauze is insanely skilled at dropping you right inside his head. The challenge of the book is that it’s almost entirely plotless, shapeless. It’s more of a stream of consciousness and long, somewhat repetitive account of his life than a novel. It’s also, as should be expected, violent and tough to read.

Interestingly, there were several people in book club who said that they liked the book and the writing but also didn’t finish it; they felt like they got what they could out of it in the first half or so. I did finish it, and I’m not sorry that I did, but I also see where they’re coming from. I’d say that this one is definitely worth picking up, but you can’t rush it. You can’t read this one in the three days leading up to book club (as we all learned, lol). It’s too much for that. It’s the kind of book that’s best read a little at a time over the course of a few weeks.

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Content Warnings

• Gun violence

• Gang violence

• Armed robbery

She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

Author: Shelley Parker-Chan
Publisher: Tor Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

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Cover Description

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.

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TL;DR Review

She Who Became the Sun is a sweeping, poetic, impressive novel. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was so good.

For you if: You want to add more non-western fantasy books to your shelf.

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Full Review

“She Who Became the Sun is a reimagining of the defeat of China’s Mongol conquerors and the founding of the Ming dynasty, and unlike real history it comes with one guarantee: this throne will be won by someone who is neither straight, nor white, nor a man.” — Shelley Parker-Chan

She Who Became the Sun is one of the most anticipated fantasy books of the year (it comes out July 20), billed as Mulan meets The Song of Achilles. So obviously I had to get my hands on it immediately. It was not what I was expecting — there aren’t actually very many fantasy elements — but it was soooo impressive and well done.

The story centers on two characters. As a child, Zhu was given a destiny of nothingness while her brother was given a destiny of greatness. When he gives up on life and casts his destiny aside, she decides to take it for her own. Disguised as her brother, Zhu will do absolutely anything it takes to survive and achieve greatness. Ouyang, a eunuch, is a general in the Mongol army and the closest friend of the prince’s son. He, too, hurtles toward what he believes is his destiny, even though it will destroy everything he holds dear.

First things first: If you’re not usually a fantasy reader, don’t be intimidated by this one. The fantasy aspects of the book are more like historical legend than magic — destiny, ghosts, divine right to rule. The fantastic elements could change and deepen in the next book (I could definitely see it happening), but for now it’s more like historical magical realism. Fantasy readers looking for sweeping magic systems, fast pacing, and a hero’s journey storyline will be disappointed, however. That said, this book is such an accomplishment.

Inspired by Chinese and Korean historical TV dramas, Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, and more, Parker-Chan describes their book as “a glorious eastern-western mashup that reflects my own identity as a mixed-race member of the Chinese diaspora.” That it definitely is, and I loved this book for it.

Finally, of course, one can’t review this book without touching on the deep, tender, powerful way Parker-Chan weaves gender into their characters and the story overall, with two main characters who are nowhere near a binary gender identity. Also, I could read Parker-Chan’s poetic, storyteller voice forever. You should too!!

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Content Warnings

• Violence in battle